Monthly Archives: October 2008

First of all, over at PhotoFridays, a few folks are sharing out Halloween-inspired pictures, so I added a few of my own. Mine come from the annual neighborhood Pumpkin Contest, which featured more than 100 carved pumpkins, a pumpkin rolling contest, the lighting of a Burning Man (perhaps it was Bush, in effigy, given the politics of our ‘hood), a gathering of friends and kids running around ramped up on sweets.

Finally, I can’t resist sharing this video from Common Craft. it is called Zombies in Plain English, and it is a nice funny take on the outstanding videos they produce and dhare about Web 2.0 tools. The Zombie movie was put out last year, but it is timeless. I though about sharing in my classroom but the ending (which I love as a viewer) makes me think that I won’t be doing that. Too many napalm bombs and such.

I’d like to invite you all to participate in this week’s Day in a Sentence. No strange twists of the concept this week — just simple: Reflect on your week or a day in your week, boil it down to a single sentence, and share it out here through the comment link of this post. (If you podcast it, that would be cool — just give me a link and I will include it in the final post).

I will gather up all of the comments and repost them as one community post over the weekend.

I look forward to your reflective insights and, if you are new, please give it a whirl. It’s a wonderful community of writers, educators and others, sharing out some words and thoughts.

I had my first Tweet-Meet-Up this week and finally put faces to two “friends” from the online world (and one friend from my daily world) over Mexican food.

And thanks to everyone who added their voices to the NotK12 Conference VoiceThread that we used last week for Day in a Sentence. It’s not too late to join that party. The K12 Conference remains in full bloom, with new presentations every day, and the VoiceThread I set up is for reflections on what you are experiencing and learning.

This week, my webcomic strip tackles one aspect of connecting with other students in the Flat World: once a geek, always a geek. See for yourself at Boolean Squared. (Or grab the RSS feed here.) Next week, Boolean Squared goes twice a week (Mondays and Thursdays).

Meanwhile, I also got a nice mention for Boolean Squared over at The Daily Cartoonist, who writes about webcomics on a regular basis. My comic was part of his weekly roundup.

And, if you haven’t gone there yet, I have set up a website for my other, longer comic pieces. I call it Kevin’s Comics because I am trying to be very original. (hahaha)

I loved the concept of the 24 Hour Comic Project that I took part in a few weeks ago that I decided to do it again on my own. This time, I trace my own development within the sphere of politics and urge folks in the United States to get out and vote. I am sharing a few of the frames here and hope that you will wander over to my new site for longer comics that I am now creating,in addition to my home for Boolean Squared.

This is a collection of student-created temples in honor of Greek gods and goddesses. We are reading The Lightning Thief, which is rich in mythology. These were created with air-dry clay, which crumbles but is effective for ancient ruins.

And this is a picture of the darn bird that has eaten all of the corn that we hung on our door. It makes a racket as it pecks away.

I am trying my hand at an animation site to see if it has possibilities for my students. The site is called Fuzzwich and it’s a bit tricky to get a handle on it, but once I got started, I figured it out. It might have possibilities for the classroom.

I am hoping you will join me this week (and beyond) in adding your Day in a Sentence to a VoiceThread that I have set up as an offshoot of the K12 Online Conference. Bud Hunt is leading the NOTK12Conference, which is another way to reflect and expand upon the learning from the wonderful K12 Online event (which has really launched in full force this week).

I set up a K12 Conference in a Sentence as a VoiceThread, asking folks to reflect on their experiences with the material in a sentence. And then, I tacked on a Day in a Sentence page, too. So, I figured, why not just make this week’s Day in a Sentence right in that VoiceThread.

Haven’t used VoiceThread? You should give it a try. It’s a great platform for pictures and audio and is quite easy to use. You will need to have an account with VoiceThread to post your comment (which can also be posted as a written comment).

So, please consider heading to the VoiceThread directly, or use the embedded Thread down below (they are one and the same).

Last week, I used Google Forms (part of the Google Docs suite) to survey my students on a variety of topics (including a community action/school spirit project). Two of the questions were open-ended: Why should they care about other people in the world and what would their motto/slogan be if they were running for president? I took their answers and put them into Wordle.

Here is what I got:

First: Why is it important that 11 and 12 year old students from a suburban town in Massachusetts care about other people in the world?

(I love how Care and Kids and Help and People are all huge)

And, what would your motto be if you were running for president?

(Is it significant that Peace and World and Change are most prominent? Yes, I believe it is)

Well, I did it. In a 24 hour block of time that started yesterday morning with an idea, I created a comic book novella (to call it a graphic novel might be to give it more creedance than it deserves). The book runs 44 frames (over 22 pages) and is called “Brothers on Ice,” as it tells the story of the time when my brother pulled me out of a frozen river. I also tried to capture some of the “place” of my childhood a bit.

Really, though, the idea comes from watching the strong relationships of my own children. It has made me think about my brother when we were kids.

So, after finishing up the book, I delivered it (and the one created by my 10-year-old son) back to the comic book store, where they will send them into the 24 Hour Comic project people, who are archiving all of the comics that were created during the event. Pretty neat.

While my son used pencil and comic book formatting paper, I used Comic Life and MS Paint. One thing I just noticed is that you can export your comic out of Comic Life in any number of formats, including as an HTML site and also as a movie/video. That is pretty neat. So I am going to try to narrate Brothers on Ice and see where that takes me. (And, I am thinking, I would love to get my students creating a comic strip, export as a movie and add their own voices. That could be a powerful idea.)